I agree with you! Back in March I finished a 15 month trip around the world while working full time. I travelled to 40 different cities in 15 countries and while some places where difficult to adapt to and the conditions where I worked from were challenging, I can say that my productivity didn't diminish.
Since I came back (I live in Barcelona) I've attended retreats in the Alps (Austria for skiing + Italy for hiking just last week) plus 2 weeks in a very nice countryside house 2 hours from Barcelona where we worked together with 10 people from the office and in the afternoons we did hikes, wine tastings or went to the beach.
Well, regular working is not traveling at all on the other hand.
It might be convenient, but hackers for decades had just had 14" (or less) monochromatic monitors and they've built masterpieces on them.
If "dual 27 inch monitors" are so important to your work, then (a) I don't see how you'd be able to be a programmer in the 80s and 90s when those things either didn't exist or costed a fortune, (b) fine, don't travel.
The "very heavy" part (for the 17" laptop) doesn't matter, as you're not supposed to backpack everywhere with it. Just keep it at your hotel/rent house/bangalow in the different cities you visit and work from there. You can still visit the city and explore all the other hours.
Besides, if it's that important, then anywhere you go and stay for a month or more (and nomads can spend several months on each country or more), you could buy a $200 24" monitor -- and then just give it away to some friend you've made, charity or sell it.
Its like saying, oh you like your power steering, and automatic transmissions? Well then you couldn't drive a Model-T.
That viewpoint that progress makes you weak is a very bad way to view the world. Progress makes us all better at what we do by making us more efficient.
No, I think it's more like saying "most of those efficiencies are probably cargo cult" especially since programmers with just a 12" laptop and Vim can (and do) run circles around people with double and triple monitor setups and fancy IDEs.
So nothing especially efficiency improving that wouldn't be trumped by simply more skills.
(Not saying that you don't have skills. You might be better than Linus. Saying that multiple monitors are not the reason for that).
Yes, it's nice to have a big screen, but not really essential. As for the second screen, it gets all marginal returns from there.
FWIW, a 24" monitor in original box will fit in a checked bag-- takes up half of the medium-large hardshell luggage I have-- and yes I've traveled with an extra screen.
Consider it like traveling with a bicycle, which people do quite successfully.
Get the portable Asus MB168B+, goes in your backpack. Lugged this bad boy around 13 countries over the past 2 years. No Flux support though!!!
To me 1-2 week vacations per year though is not a large enough chunk of time off. I sometimes wonder if I'd rather forgo weekends, accumulate all of that time and then take 2-3 months off all at once.
Travelled through much of SE Asia, but lived in Thailand for a couple months. India (travel) Spain (living) and so on.
That said, I get antsy if I'm "in the office" (physically or otherwise) for too long and, when traveling, there does come a point where I'm ready to get back to my house rather than living out of a travel backpack.
These days I find it much more practical to take a couple of 1-2 week vacations and spend some time around business trips than to take a huge chunk of time off. But circumstances will vary.
Planning to work remotely laster this year and will definitely pick a spot and stay parked there for weeks.